John
Biggers, D.Sc., Ph.D.
Dr.
Biggers is currently Professor of Cell Biology,
In
1958, together with Dr. Anne McLaren, he demonstrated that mouse blastocysts
that had developed from eight cell embryos in a simple chemically defined
medium would develop into normal young after transfer to the uterus of
surrogate mothers. In 1967, Dr. Wesley Whitten and he also demonstrated that
mouse blastocysts that had developed from zygotes in vitro would also develop
after transfer to a surrogate mother into normal young. Since then, one of his
interests has been the physiology of the preimplantation embryo and the
optimization of media for the culture of mammalian preimplantation embryos,
which has led to the KSOM family of media.
He
is the past President of the Society of Reproduction, former Editor-in-Chief of
Biology of Reproduction and chief Scientific Advisor to the Ethics Committee,
US Department of Health, Education and Welfare. He has been honored as a Fellow
of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and as recipient of the Hartman
Award of the Society of Reproduction, the Pioneer Award of the International
Embryo Transfer Society, and the Marshall Medal of the Society for the Study of
Fertility, UK.